AnarchistArtificer

@AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Transgender, nonbinary and disabled people more likely to view AI negatively, study shows⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My dude, do you know what statistics is? The paper doesn’t say anything of that sort. Measuring the proportion of people who hold a particular belief is nothing like what you describe

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Transgender, nonbinary and disabled people more likely to view AI negatively, study shows⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You are committing a logical fallacy called “affirming the consequent”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Transgender, nonbinary and disabled people more likely to view AI negatively, study shows⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Props to you for admitting you spoke prematurely

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT dissidents, the students who refuse to use AI: ‘I couldn’t remember the last time I had written something by myself’⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When I was in high school, in the 2000s/2010s, our final maths exams included a calculator and a non calculator paper. As far as I’m aware, that’s still typical today. The advent of calculators required us to rethink our approach in teaching and setting tests in maths, but that doesn’t diminish the usefulness of learning long division.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cutting sucks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the person you’re replying to is arguing that whilst exercise can have myriad health benefits, that when it comes to weight loss, it’s more practical to focus on one’s diet. I also hold that view, and it seems to be the consensus amongst weight loss specialists. You can’t outrun a bad diet when the difficulty of burning calories is so much higher than the ease of consuming calories. If someone who wanted to lose weight was going to focus on either changing their diet, or increasing their activity level, then diet is the sensible choice.

  Of course, framing it like that is a bit of a false dichotomy, because the health benefits associated with exercise are so significant that I’ve seen some research that suggests it may be healthier to be fat and fit than to be at a healthy weight and unfit/sedentary. Personally, I struggled with disordered eating for many years, but I was finally able to lose weight in a healthy way after I started powerlifting. The impact was mostly one of morale: whilst the increased muscle mass and activity level increased the number of maintenance calories I needed, it wasn’t too huge of an impact when compared to how much I was eating before. What actually changed was how I felt about my body, and how I thought about food, as well as my overall energy levels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Surprise!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve also seen that kind of homophobia amongst straight girls and women, though it manifests somewhat differently. The most uncomfortable thing about same-sex changing rooms as a person who experiences same-sex attraction isn’t actually the attraction (because checking out people in that context would be weird, regardless of gender or sexuality), but people who treat you like a predator because you’re queer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Surprise!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, I would say that the magnitude of my attraction is roughly 50/50, but qualitatively, the attraction I feel towards a man is distinct from what I feel towards women.

  A significant aspect that plays a role is also how I present to the world. From my appearance, most people would conclude that I am LGBTQ, and that usually means assuming I’m gay. This is useful because any bisexual’s dating pool is biased towards opposite sex partners; if I want to find gay or bisexual (or pansexual or asexual) women to date, it’s strategically useful to wear my sexuality on my sleeve, so to speak. This has the helpful side effects of filtering out the kind of straight asshole who says “why would you shave your hair like that? You might get more male attention if you made yourself look pretty”

  Sexuality is messy. The attraction I feel is pretty equal. How the world perceives me is more gay than straight (because the world likes to pretend that bisexuality doesn’t exist, and then act like I’m changing my mind when I “switch from being gay to straight” or vice versa (/facepalm). In terms of who I actually date or hook up with, the balance is probably skewed towards men. These three components (attraction, outward identification/presentation and behaviour) make sexuality complex, especially for bisexual people; I would wager that there are many people who identify as straight and have had no same sex relationships, but who experience some level of same-sex attraction. It also gets more complex when one considers that many people experience sexual attraction and romantic attraction differently. For example, I have a friend who is asexual, but homoromantic.

  You might find it interesting to read about the Kinsey scale, which looks at sexuality as a spectrum, with exclusively [homosexual/heterosexual] on the extreme ends of the scale, and degrees of bisexuality between them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chatgpt shared link searchable⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They get more human written text, which is one of the most powerful things in their doomed attempt to forestall model collapse

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This says it well. I also like how the character’s fucked up backstory is inescapably linked to the fucked up backstory of the world he lives in. It it were just that he was a fuck-up, then it wouldn’t be as compelling. What I really love is that whilst he certainly is the victim of his own choices, it’s much more the case that he’s a victim of his material circumstances (rather like how I am currently still in bed due to a combination of poor choices, and material circumstances making consistent good choices very hard)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I enjoyed it because many RPGs are a power fantasy, where you’re an epic hero who saves the world. Some of them present you with a blank slate character you can shape however you wish, and whilst that can be fun, I find I have more fun when I’m playing a character with some history.

  In Disco Elysium, you’re playing as someone whose history is fucked up, so good choices often aren’t an option. He’s not a typical hero, and he’ll be lucky if he can save himself, let alone the world — the world is even more fucked up than he is, riddled with scars from a long dead, hopeful era. Even though at the start of the game, both the player and your character have no knowledge of history, you can’t escape it.

  A huge part of why I like it is because I can see what it’s going for, and I’m here for that. Even if I didn’t personally click with it, I think I would respect it for having things to say and committing to it. What’s an RPG that you have clicked with or loved what it was going for? If you’re not into Disco Elysium, then I suspect that your answer might be a game that would pull me out of my comfort zone in interesting ways.

  “dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.”

  I think this is a pretty harsh statement, but it did make me laugh, because part of why I vibed with Disco Elysium so much is because a couple years before, I actually bumped my head that I lost my memory and couldn’t even remember who I was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I will always back you up bratan! You and I are bratannoi – brothers. Brothers fight. But when they’re done fighting, you know what they do? They party. They fucking party!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Peter Thiel’s bestie going mask off⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think he is basically saying “I think that black people are bad. I also think that some billionaires are bad, but it’s #notallbillionaires . The innate badness that black people have and the bad billionaires have are the same, so I am going to call the bad billionaires black”. In other words, racist bullshit

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Humanity will likely survive climate change, but the vast majority of humans won't.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That was a delightful video; thanks for sharing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epstein puts my morality into perspective⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In many ways, we’re already at that point. Crises often don’t come out of nowhere, and if we think of crisis as a sliding scale rather than a binary, I would argue we’re already in a time of crisis, and have been for a while.

  That’s why I agree with you. I am often miserable and demoralised, and I often feel suicidal because of my personal hopelessness. The goodness you describe is a huge part of why I’m still here. It gives me a wider sense of hope, because many of the best people I know are just as aware of the harms caused by the unchecked power of assholes, but the worse that the world gets, the more steadfastly good they are. Most of them are as depressed as me, but they seem to draw strength from the defiance of giving a fuck about morality in a world on fire.

  It invokes a sense of duty in me that helps bolster my own resilience. When I was a suicidal teen, I felt like I was staying alive solely for other people, and this wasn’t a productive or healthy way to live. This sense of duty feels different, because it’s not framed as if I am a living martyr, sacrificing my own happiness for other people. Instead, it’s grounded in the recognition that we’re all struggling, and I actively want to stand alongside the defiant good people. Given the shakiness of my resolve, I don’t feel like I have much concrete to add to their efforts, but perhaps I can show them that even when it feels like you’re losing the big fight, the very act of resistance can galvanise the hearts of people who had already given up. After all, I’m still here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ACAB applies even for the nice and genuine cops.

  It’s about criticisms of policing as an institution, not individuals

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polish Train Maker Is Suing the Hackers Who Exposed Its Anti-Repair Tricks⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I keep a small list titled “illegal heroes”, and these hackers are on that list. It’s bullshit that they’re being hounded like this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨bird based storage⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I love this dude’s work. He’s so chaotic, and it makes me happy to see someone thriving by leaning in their ADHD

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI Seeks Additional Capital From Investors as Part of Its $40 Billion Round⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The return comes from more future promises filled with ever increasing hot air. OpenAI is especially bad for this — In 2024, they spend $9 billion to make $5 billion. They’re losing money each year, but they drum up venture capital investment by saying “invest more money because some day we’ll be profitable”. Then they build larger, more complex GPT models to continue fuelling the hype machine, even though those models cost even more to run. But as long as OpenAI and the like can sustain the hype machine, venture capital will keep pumping money in. They have to, because they’ve got too much money in the system already, and when the bubble pops, the hot air will escape.

  If they invested into something cool or meaningful, their returns will be limited. Tech seems to be especially appealing for venture capital because it facilitates the illusion of infinite growth being possible. The super rich don’t really trade in money, because they borrow against their assets. Imagine if you owned a fairly modest house that was worth 500k, but you wanted to sell it for more. If you and a bunch of other people constructed an elaborate fiction that led to your house being valued at $10 million, then you could borrow multiple millions of dollars against the inflated value of your house. Even if early investors in a bullshit project wise up and realise their mistake, they haven’t necessarily lost money as long as other investors still think the bullshit is worth investing in. So the cycle of venture capital means that everyone has a vested interest in keeping the hype train going.

  It’s an absurd bubble, and it’s going to be absolute chaos when it bursts. Ed Zitron’s analysis explores it really well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “women” is pretty widely accepted, and has been for many, many years. The reason why “females” makes people uncomfortable is because even before it was overused by online misogynists, it had an overly scientific air to it that gives bad vibes, especially if it’s being used as a noun. It’s not unreasonable for women to feel uncomfortable when being referred to using language that would be more appropriate to use for animals. The oddness of this is most stark when you see phrases like “men and females”, rather than “men and women”.

  I don’t blame people for not being aware of the connotations of using the word “female” in this way, but it seems fairly straightforward that if there’s a strong consensus that a group of people object to being called something, that it would be courteous to respect that. And even if in a year from now, “women” became as stigmatized as “female” and there was a different preferred term, then using that preferred term would also be courteous. If you don’t want to be courteous, then that’s your prerogative, but given that OP wants to talk to women, then it seems like warning him against the word “female” is useful advice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a sweet story. I hope she had a good answer to your question. If she didn’t answer it back then, you should spring it on her like “you never did tell me what it was like being the queen of analogies”. She best have a good answer, after all these years

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do females got to be so hard to talk or flirt with?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with men who take everything the wrong way, and then blow up at you for “leading them on”. That causes me, and many other women, to tend to default to being guarded when getting to know men. Even if only a small proportion of interactions end up making us feel scared for our safety, it still amounts to being frequent enough that this kind of guardedness ends up being a wise and necessary precaution for women in general.

  It sucks on many levels that this is needed. As well as being an uneasy way to exist as a woman, it also means that there’s a heckton of “false positives”, so to speak. I think that this can especially affect people who are generally socially anxious. I know that being aware of this doesn’t help you to actually figure out how to talk to women, but I’d advise you to try to not take it personally. A friend once told me that reminding himself of this fact actually helped him to feel more confident approaching women; when he was able to internalise the fact that the guardedness wasn’t necessarily aimed at him, but at assholish men who don’t respect women as people and won’t respect their boundaries (which wasn’t him), he found that it helped him to feel more at ease pushing himself out of his comfort zone.

  This problem is why it can be easier to meet women at hobbies and other organised social stuff. I used to really struggle with social anxiety in general, and I found that going to events made it much easier to get to know people, especially when the hobby in question made it easier to dip in and out of social stuff by focussing on the task at hand (board games was a big one for me)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They even got their own island⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In school, when I was 13, one of my friends was “dating” a 19 year old. I vividly remember how cool we all thought this was. Reflecting on it makes me feel sick.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls Online devs detail “inhumane” Microsoft layoffs as Xbox expects the “carcass of workers” to “keep shipping award-winning games”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for this, I appreciate it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone struggle with spending money foolishly on prostitutes?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not personally Christian, but I was raised that way. I was pretty strongly anti-Christian as a result of that upbringing, but when I got to university, my stance was softened significantly by meeting wonderful Christians who were incredibly based. I remember that one of them described that they almost left the faith because of discomfort with their humanity, such as lust. In the end, they concluded that if God had made them with the ability to feel lust and enjoy lustful activities, then it felt wrong to deny this part of themselves (and indeed, they found that their lust was far more moderate and manageable when they stopped fighting themselves so much).

  I feel like lust can be good or bad, depending on the context, rather like how I find that playing video games can be good or bad. Sometimes when I game it’s fulfilling, and a good use of my time. Sometimes though, I am desperately chasing some sense of escapism in a way that I can tell is harmful to me. Perhaps your battle would be better spent learning to discern the good from the bad. For example, if you’re super tight on money, then yeah, it’s probably not a great idea to be chasing the lust. But if you have the monetary means, and you’re in a good headspace about it, then perhaps indulging is not a bad thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK to lower voting age to 16⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve always found it silly that one could legally have sex with their MP, but not vote for them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Which is your project?

  As an aside, your comment has hit me in a surprisingly profound way. I think it’s because it can be too easy to forget about the people behind the software we use. This is especially the case with proprietary software from big companies, but it can also happen with open source or smaller projects from individual devs. I think that it arises in part from thinking about software as a product, which neglects the messy relationality of how things are actually made, maintained and used.

  It’s sweet to see such a serendipitous exchange of appreciation. It makes the world feel smaller, but in a good way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I ended up wading into the world of WINE prefixes when I tried to mod some older games. I got it working in the end, but it sure made me grateful for how easy I have it with Proton

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I share your enthusiasm. I wanted to learn Linux because so much scientific computing in my field relies on it, but when I dual booted, it was too easy to just retreat to Windows as the path of least resistance. I decided to fully make the switch to Linux as an attempt to force myself to learn stuff, but the big thing that held me back was nervousness about gaming.

  Turns out that this fear was completely unfounded, and I have been utterly astounded at how easy gaming on Linux was. It wasn’t completely pain free, and there were a couple times that I needed to tinker somewhat, but it was no more difficult or frequent than I needed to do similar stuff on Windows.

  I get what you mean about logging on feeling like home. Besides the scientific computing, a big part of what pushed me to Linux was how ambiently icked out I felt by using Windows — it didn’t feel like mine. Running Windows feels like renting a home from a landlord who doesn’t respect your boundaries and just comes in to make changes while you’re sleeping. Like, it’s not even about whether those changes are good or bad, but how weird it feels to constantly be reminded that this home is not truly yours.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Facebook advertised a professional child kidnapping service to me⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for sharing this. I’ve still got quite a few chapters to go, but I wanted to comment this thought before I forget it: it’s so incredibly striking how powerful the small acts of kindness are. I’ve cried more at the little gestures of kindness than at all the cruelty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨10 incredible PC games that never got console ports—until Steam Deck happened⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Despite not owning one, I really like the Steam Deck because I suspect it has made my transition to Linux far smoother (for a while, I dual booted because I was fearful that gaming on Linux would be difficult.)